Archive for the ‘Series’ Category
The Tale of the Astrolabe
Wednesday, April 21st, 2010
Beyond the city lay fields of grain watered by irrigation tunnels from under the mountain. Between the fields and the herdsmen’s savannah stood a line of towers, roosts for owls who kept the fields clear of mice. Tower-keepers patrolled with slings, killing any snake that might climb up to raid eggs from the nests.
A boy named Saan was one of the few not born into the role–his mother and grandmother arranged the job, hoping he might be the first male in five generations of their family not to be devoured by lions while tending the herds.
One evening, as he walked the path between towers, he saw an owl disappear down a dry irrigation tunnel, an astrolabe in its talons and he ran after it, thinking that whatever magus had lost the instrument would pay a good reward for its return.
Down he ran and down, not realizing how far he’d gone until the dog-headed guardians challenged him with riddles. Saan had heard enough stories to know that the first answer was always “death;” the second, “fear;” the last, “hope.” As he answered the final riddle, a cart drawn by dozens of fennec foxes drew up. He climbed on, and they rolled away into the darkness.
The cave went on, a moonless, starless midnight desert of salt dunes. The only light was an occasional ruby glow deep under the salt-sand, by which Saan could see his fellow-travelers–a pair of elderly troglodyte women, a baboon in a filigree robe, and a scorpion-man with translucent carapace skin and sting-tipped fingers. They rode for hours, and Saan’s stomach rumbled with hunger even though the baboon had shared some dates and the scorpion-man had passed around a bowl of candied scarabs.
The cave narrowed to a tunnel which brought them to the shore of a silent, faintly luminescent sea, along which stood a line of towers like those he’d left above.
“We have arrived,” said the scorpion-man, and the others nodded.
“Where?” said Saan.
“The place of your training,” said the baboon.
“Of your testing,” said the troglodyte women in unison.
Saan saw that the fennec-drawn cart stood near the passage back to the salt desert.
“Can’t I just go home?” said Saan.
“Anytime,” said the scorpion-man.
Then Saan saw that the entrance to the cave passage was carved like the mouth of an immense lion.
“I guess I’ll stay,” he said.
God Is Not Screwing Around
Monday, April 19th, 2010
“This came for you, Martin,” said Sue at reception as Martin was sneaking out of work early one Tuesday. He sheepishly took the envelope and retreated to the break room. The fluorescent lights hummed tirelessly, and Martin, who was 39, felt old and useless. He opened the envelope. It burst into flame.
illustration by Ethan Reid
Martin shrieked and threw the envelope down on the table, where it continued to flame brightly without burning up.
“MARTIN, THIS IS GOD,” said a voice from the burning envelope. “I’D LIKE TO GET TOGETHER WITH YOU UP HERE THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW AT THREE. SEE YOU THEN.”
The flames guttered, and Martin reached tentatively for the envelope. It flared again.
“AND MARTIN,” said God. “LET’S KEEP THIS BETWEEN US.”
The envelope suddenly burned away to fine ash that drifted off the table and settled invisibly over the dun-colored, industrial carpeting.
Martin didn’t sleep well that night. He began by worrying about what God could possibly want with him, but by 2:00 AM he had shifted his fretful attention to logistics. How was he supposed to get to the meeting? Would he just be lifted up bodily? If so, what if he was indoors? And so on.
The next day he would have called in sick, but God was probably watching. At work, he managed to utterly bork the financial projections he’d been working on for two weeks.
Martin was wigging out: he had to talk to someone, even though God had said not to. There seemed a real possibility he was going insane. He went down to see Sue at reception.
“You look awful,” she said. “Are you OK?”
“Actually,” Martin said in a rough voice. “I’ve been a little stressed out. I have this appointment with–”
#
The next thing Martin knew, he was waking up naked and badly hung over in an empty warehouse that smelled like beer and piss. Something sharp was jabbing his back. When he got up, he discovered he’d been sleeping on a Barbie bed.
“God is not screwing around,” Martin said.
Work that next day passed in disoriented tedium. At 2:52 he wandered into the hallway and out the back door. In a store window across the street the sun gleamed like gold. Martin squinted. Could that be–? He stepped off the curb toward the light, right into the path of a speeding Ford F-150.
Martin actually ended up being a couple of minutes early.